No. 3271

Buckwheat Cakes with Baking Powder

Galettes de Sarrasin a la Levure en Poudre

This paste should be made just when ready to use, in the same proportions and in the same manner as the buckwheat cakes with yeast (No. 3272), only suppressing the yeast. When ready divide it into two parts, and incorporate into one of these two tablespoonfuls of baking powder: mix thoroughly and cook at once, proceeding exactly as for the others. As soon as the first part is exhausted put the same quantity of baking powder into the second part, and proceed precisely as for the first.

← No. 3270 English Buns and Hot Cross Buns Breakfast Cakes No. 3272 Buckwheat Cakes with Yeast →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer gives this as a shortcut version of his yeast-raised buckwheat cakes, so the quantities live in the next entry rather than this one. What is here is really a method note, and the method is the point.

The hinge: cook immediatelyChemical leavening starts working the moment it meets the wet, slightly acid batter. That is why the batter is divided and powdered in two stages — the second half is left unleavened until the first is used up. Do not mix all the powder in and let the bowl stand.
The missing quantitiesThe proportions are borrowed from No. 3272, which this page does not reproduce. Period buckwheat cake batters vary: some are mostly buckwheat, others cut it with a good proportion of wheat flour, slackened with milk or water to a thin pouring consistency, usually with salt and often a spoonful of molasses. Without the companion entry, any figure given here would be a guess.
Two tablespoons of baking powderNote that this is two tablespoonfuls into each half of the batter in turn, not two for the whole. Since the flour quantity is not given here, the dose cannot be pinned down, but it reads high against current practice of about 1 to 1¼ teaspoons per cup of flour. Nineteenth-century baking powders varied in strength and could lose potency on the shelf, which may account for a generous hand. Scale to the flour you actually use, or the cakes will taste soapy and metallic.
Buckwheat is not wheatIt is a seed, not a cereal, and contributes no gluten. The wheat flour in the blend is structural, not optional; an all-buckwheat batter gives cakes that are fragile and crumble on the turn.
Griddle heatThe recipe specifies no griddle or heat. Cook on a moderately hot griddle: the cake is ready to turn when the surface bubbles have opened and the edges look dry, and buckwheat browns faster than wheat and goes bitter if the heat is pushed to searing.
Yeast version versus this oneYeast buckwheat batters of this sort were typically set well ahead, often overnight, developing the sour, faintly winey flavour buckwheat cakes were prized for; No. 3272 is not reproduced here, so its exact timing cannot be checked. This version trades that for speed; expect a cleaner, plainer, nuttier cake.

A Little History

The Epicurean (1894) was Charles Ranhofer's summing-up of roughly three decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and the French title here — galettes de sarrasin — sits alongside the English one as the book's bilingual habit throughout. Buckwheat griddle cakes were an American breakfast staple, particularly in the mid-Atlantic and the Northeast, and were commonly raised overnight with yeast or with a batter "start" held back from the previous morning. This entry reflects the wider shift by which packaged baking powder, commercially available in the United States from around the middle of the nineteenth century, offered an alternative to that overnight routine: the same cake in minutes rather than hours. Ranhofer's splitting of the batter may suggest some wariness about the substitution, since chemical leavening, unlike a yeast batter, goes flat while it waits.